Passes and 'space' in invasion games and sports

Hi All,

I have just begun examining some of the elements of play with invasion sports and have been examining two particular elements in relation to observation and analysis of players and play; the space that players feel safe and not confronted in and the type of pass they throw. Gréhaigne, Richard and Griffin (the text we base our understanding of play on) suggest that there are four types of spaces that are important to players in invasion sports
and are relevant in regard to observation and analysis of players and where they need to develop. These are the immediate space they have, the intermediate space that is defined by the space range of their limbs, the safety space and the confrontational space. These last two are important as they define the area in which players feel they have time to execute their 'plays', the less experience, the greater these last two spaces are for the player.

They also suggest as players move from beginners to advanced, they range of passes they have available of use actually change. As beginners, they start with the face to face pass (and I would suggest this is divided into two, the face to face given to a player moving away and the face to face with a player moving to them), then the pass into the pathway of a player moving parallel in a forward line together (forward vision only), the orthogonal pass that is a pass at right angles into the space where they player will be (forward and sideways vision and finally what I would loosely term a 'read' pass, the pass that is delivered to the space where and educated guess is made by the passer on where the player will need to be.

This brings up two interesting considerations for teaching 2 dimensional invasion sports. For those of us who have tried to teach sports such as touch and rugby league to three dimensional players or those with no background in these types of sports, it is a very difficult task. Beginners consistently throw the ball away with seemingly no one 'near them' or find it really difficult to get behind the ball as is required by the primary rule of 'no passing forward. The reasons for this are simply explained using the above ideas. The players throw the ball away because their idea of what is safe for them and what is a confrontation is much greater for beginners than the experienced. Thus the experienced player will take the ball to the line before passing. Secondly, the types of passes needed tends to fall into the orthogonal category of the read category, thus are much more difficult to make for the beginner: the very nature of the pass is the issue!

These elements are also relevant for the teaching of other invasion sports with beginners and form a much more logical reason for the reasons they struggle. When confronted by large numbers of players, the beginner often throws the ball in the air. The typical response is movement technique based; teach them passing technique and drill this. These elements give a much better picture of the issues. It does not mean that you don't give feedback on passing, it just means that it probably is not be the main issue. After all, if they get these elements sorted, they could throw a technically incorrect pass and still get a great result.

Have a look at your teams, classes and see if these elements are issues. I'll put some solutions in my next posting.

Greg

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